Synthetic Biology Primes Solid Tumors for Immunotherapy

Engineering bacteria to deliver anticancer drugs amounts to giving an untreatable cancer a treatable disease. “The bacterium that the researchers [at Columbia University] developed is a non-pathogenic strain of E. coli. It’s designed to colonize solid tumors, replicating until the number of bacteria reaches a certain threshold. Then the bacteria self-destructs, releasing anti-cancer therapeutics in the tumors. A small number of bugs survive—enough to continuously deliver the drug.” MORE